Gateway
Gateway is the twentieth level in Orcs Must Die!. The Lightning Ring is introduced here. Stage Description The map is formed as two castles face to face, with the castle at the top of the map housing three gates before a large court. A long and five square wide bridge leads to your castle, which houses the rift at its top floor. There are many ledges and rooftops in your castle which are excellent places to set your archers, many of them with manned ballistas (there are three manned autoballista in all). A portal in front of the rift leads you directly downstairs, as well as two flights of stairs within your castle. The gate itself to your castle is merely three squares wide and the staircases are only two squares wide. Mob Waves (War Mage) Enemies Encountered: Orc Warrior, Shield Orcs, Crossbow Orcs, Kobold Runners, Hellbats, Fire Babies, Hobgoblin Shaman and Frost Ogre. 1. Center: Orc Warriors & Shield Orcs 2. Center: Crossbow Orcs, Orc Warriors & Shield Orcs, Kobold Runners 3. Center: Frost Ogre, Crossbow Orcs, Orc Warriors & Shield Orcs, Hobgoblin Shaman Go Break 4. Right and Left: Fire Babies, Hellbats 5. Center: Orc Warriors & Shield Orcs, Kobold Runners; Right: Hellbats 6. Center: Orc Warriors & Shield Orcs, Kobold Runners; Left: Hellbats Go Break 7. Center: Frost Ogre, Orc Warriors & Shield Orcs, Kobold Runners x2 8. Center: Crossbow Orcs; Right and Left: Hellbats 9. Center: Orc Warriors & Shield Orcs, Frost Ogre, Orc Warriors & Shield Orcs, Hobgoblin Shaman x2 Go Break 10. Center: Orc Warriors & Shield Orcs x2; Right and Left: Fire Babies, Hellbats 11. Center: Orc Warriors & Shield Orcs x2; Right and Left: Hellbats x2 12. Center: Crossbow Orcs, Frost Ogre x2, Hobgoblin Shaman x2, Kobold Runners; Right and Left: Fire Babies Walkthrough (War Mage) Starting Gold: 3500 coins This map gives you the Lightning Ring, which you'll find excellent against Fire Babies and Crossbow Orcs. Being able to reliably take out multiple orcs before they can shoot at you with the primary Chain Lightning fire means you can snipe the rest of them without worrying about dodging. The alt-fire Lightning Storm drops a temporary killzone anywhere on the map: perfect to help early killzone arrangments. With Knowledge Weaver Select Crossbow, Wind Belt, Ice Amulet, Lightning Ring, Arrow Wall, Elf Archer, Swinging Mace, Brimstone and Decoy Get your Spell Magnification upgrade and place a swinging mace underneath your castle's gateway. You want to drop a lightning storm under the swinging mace and just kill everything together. Add a decoy at the tail end of the swinging mace, place it so that orcs attacking the decoy are in the mace's path. With your money, start placing brimstones at the bottom and at the top of the staircases for your kobold rushes. Keep shooting crossbow orcs and kobold runners with chain lightning for easy money. Add archers on the parapets with manned ballistas on them during breaks. Arrow walls placed on the upper halves of the archway by the north castle will help reducing flying mobs, but elf archer placement should be a priority as they are more effective. You can add a second swinging mace and arrow walls at the gateway later on. With Steel Weaver Select Crossbow, Wind Belt, Ice Amulet, Lightning Ring, Arrow Wall,Spring Trap, Elf Archer, Brimstone and Decoy Despite the bridge being five squares wide, spring traps make for a perfectly fine strategy against the main orc horde. Start with three spring traps at the center, your Death Augmenter upgrade and a decoy on the tail end of the traps; then proceed in adding more spring traps. Place your killzone just beyond the main gateway so that you can simultaneously control the kobold runners once they rush in, with repeated crossbow fire and brimstones under the gateway. There's no trick for dealing with the first Frost Ogre: he'll attack your decoy, you'll drop a lightning storm over your spring traps and repeatedly headshot until he's slain or you'll be too busy with the kobold runners and the decoy will blow up in his face. At the first break, put all your money into archers: place them on the ledge alongside your manned ballistas. Keep adding archers, get your Overcoiled Springs and you should have about 15 spring traps arranged in three rows by the second break. Overcoiled Springs make elevated arrow traps between the main archway a good investment for flying mobs but not as good as archers. With Elemental Weaver Select Crossbow, Wind Belt, Ice Amulet, Flame Bracers, Lightning Ring, Tar Trap, Elf Archer, Barricade and Swinging Mace. Get your Firestorm upgrade then place a swinging mace underneath the gateway: concentrate crossbow fire on shield orcs and place a lightning storm underneath your swinging mace, wind blasting orcs back into the mace/storm. Cast chain lightning on crossbow orcs and wait out the kobold rushes underneath your mace. Add Tar Traps underneath the mace with your money, then start building a maze around your swinging mace with barricades (that means two in front on the right and two past the mace on the left). Place a whole bunch of archers on your parapets. Deal with Hobgoblin Shamans personally: hop into the mob with a Frost Nova and shoot it fast. You don't want to leave the swinging mace/maze deathtrap on it's own because orcs have been known to pass through (particularly shield orcs who can survive a swing). Your Charged Weapons upgrade will be important in regenerating mana. With excess coins, you can either add more tar traps to slow down the main mob for your archers, or even start building a wedge in the middle of the bridge for you to wind blast orcs into the drink. Start with one barricade dead center, two more placed behind it corner to corner and you've reduced the orc path to two lanes each. Additional tar traps and the Icy Winds upgrade helps in getting larger killstreaks off blown away mobs. Mob Waves (Nightmare) Enemies Encountered: Orc Warrior, Shield Orcs, Crossbow Orcs, Kobold Runners, Hellbats, Fire Babies, Hobgoblin Shaman and Frost Ogre. 1. Center: Shield Orcs x2, Frost Ogre 2. Center: Crossbow Orcs, Shield Orcs, Kobold Runners 3. Center: Crossbow Orcs, Frost Ogre, Shield Orcs, Hobgoblin Shaman 4. Right and Left: Fire Babies x2, Hellbats 5. Center: Shield Orcs, Kobold Runners; Right: Hellbats 6. Center: Shield Orcs, Kobold Runners; Left: Hellbats 7. Center: Frost Ogre x2, Shield Orcs, Kobold Runners x2 8. Center: Crossbow Orcs, Hobgoblin Shaman x3; Right and Left: Hellbats 9. Center: Shield Orcs, Frost Ogre, Shield Orcs, Hobgoblin Shaman x2 10. Center: Crossbow Orcs, Shield Orcs; Right and Left: Fire Babies, Hellbats 11. Center: Shield Orcs, Frost Ogre, Shield Orcs; Right and Left: Hellbats 12. Center: Frost Ogre x2, Crossbow Orcs, Frost Ogre, Kobold Runner, Hobgoblin Shaman x3; Right and Left: Hellbats Walkthrough (Nightmare) Starting Gold: 3500 coins Par Time: 16 minutes Most of the strategies used in the War Mage difficulty apply to Nightmare difficulty except for the fact that archer placement is that much more of a pain. Place your archers during flying mob assaults after having dealt with the ground mobs: the flyers are all very slow and won't attack you directly unless you're in their path. Furthermore, there's the gate close by if you are attacked while dealing with flyers. In my opinion, kobold rushes are much harder to deal with and are far more plentiful in Nightmare mode. With Knowledge Weaver Select Crossbow, Wind Belt, Ice Amulet, Lightning Ring, Elf Archer, Swinging Mace, Brimstone, Autoballista, Decoy and Coinforge Same strategy as in War Mage, replacing the arrow walls for autoballistas placed on the parapet with the central manned ballista (place archers first though, when you can). Placing a coinforge underneath the swinging mace with a lightning storm in place will net you the funds necessary for such an arrangement. Arrange the coinforge so that you can still place triple brimstones underneath the gateway: this will make it easier for you to shoot the bulk of the kobold rush on the coinforge itself while providing an answer for those kobolds that would escape you. There are a lot of ogres on the final wave so you might want to double up (or even triple up) on decoys, especially if you haven't upgraded them. With Steel Weaver Select Crossbow, Wind Belt, Ice Amulet, Lightning Ring, Spring Trap, Elf Archer, Brimstone, Autoballista, Decoy and Coinforge It's hard to place a coinforge when your main honeypot comes from flinging masses of orcs into the drink: either place the coinforge well ahead of your spring traps or replace it for anything else; like the Flame Bracers or the Blade Staff. Otherwise, get your Death Augmenter upgrade, start placing those springtraps outside of your castle's gateway and place a decoy to fool them. Blow back orcs that would ignore the decoy back into the traps. With enough spring traps (fifteen, three rows of five) and the Overcoiled Springs upgrade, you should have the ground mobs covered and be ready to place archers on the three parapets with manned ballistas and autoballistas on the central ledge. With Elemental Weaver Select Crossbow, Wind Belt, Ice Amulet, Lightning Ring, Tar Trap, Elf Archer, Barricade, Swinging Mace, Spore Mushrooms and Coinforge. Mostly the same strategy as in War Mage but replacing the Flame Bracers with the Spore Mushrooms. A Frost Ogre attracts an incredible amount of attention from flyers and will therefore make them easy targets for your elf archers. Place a few coinforges at the top end of the map, leaving space for potential spore mushroom traps on the second half of the bridge. You'll be doing a lot of running around, especially if you need health. Kobold rushes are particularly hard to deal with as they're hard to single out with chain lightning and you don't have any ready counters in terms of traps apart from tar trap and Elf archers together. Category:Orcs Must Die!